Short and Sweet: 9-Hole, Par 3, and Short Courses are the Future

short courses

Nine-holers, Par-3s, and other abbreviated courses are all the rage–and could be the secret to reviving golf Former U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy missed the cut at the 2009 British Open, but that didn’t prevent him from making lasting memories that week. Each day, after practice and following his first two rounds at the Ailsa […]

100 Years of Pebble Beach: The U.S. Amateur

Amateur

In 2019, Pebble Beach Golf Links will celebrate its 100th birthday and host its sixth U.S. Open. To commemorate these milestones, each issue of LINKS Magazine and LINKSdigital between now and then will tell the unique story that is Pebble Beach. Those articles will also be shared here on our website.   While Pebble Beach is […]

George Peper on Par 3 Courses

I’m afraid I have no interest in Par-54 courses… but I love the holes that comprise them Our Spring 2018 issue’s cover story focuses on the spate of high-profile Par-3 courses that have sprouted during the last couple of years. It got me to thinking about the love-hate relationship I’ve always had with the par […]

Bringing Back the Classics: FootJoy 1857 Collection

Since metal woods, game-improvement irons, and space-age materials have become the norm, it’s difficult to find a golf company that can trace its roots back 50 years let alone three times that. But FootJoy can draw a timeline back to 1857, when one Frederick Packard left his father’s boot-making business to start crafting shoes of […]

Frugal Golfer: Outer Banks, N.C.

By Mike Purkey   If the Outer Banks of North Carolina seems out of the way, it’s because it is. This 200-mile chain of barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean is the most remote strip of civilization in the eastern U.S. You don’t happen by the Outer Banks by accident; getting there takes a bit […]

First Peek: Stoatin Brae

By Graylyn Loomis The newest course at a Michigan resort is a coming-out party for a team of up-and-coming designers When Jon Scott, owner of Gull Lake View Resort in Augusta, Mich., wanted to add a sixth golf course to his family’s property, he turned to Tom Doak, who lives about three hours north in […]

Classic Course: Somerset Hills Country Club

By Tom Ierubino   Hidden away in Bernardsville, N.J., seven miles from the USGA’s headquarters in Far Hills, Somerset Hills is a place where time seems to stand still—but in a good way. There are no cart paths, and most of the golfers walk. The understated clubhouse is more about utility than grandeur. The same […]

The Essential: Tom Doak

Growing up in suburban Connecticut, Tom Doak would accompany his father on business trips to places like Pebble Beach and Harbour Town, where he caught the golf bug. He later traveled extensively throughout the British Isles on a Cornell University post-graduate scholarship, paying particularly close attention to the Old Course at St. Andrews, studying it […]

Great Courses of Britain & Ireland: Enniscrone

The golf club celebrates its 100th year in 2018, but as I round the peak of towering Cnoc na gCorp in search of my ball, I can’t help but ponder the millennia of wind and tides and sliding glaciers that pushed this sandy pyramid up out of the dunes. It is the tallest ridge on […]

Rules of Disorder: 10 Moments That Shouldn’t Have Happened

April of 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of a memorable Masters—but one that made its indelible mark in history for the wrong reasons. A Sunday in Augusta that should have been remembered for Roberto De Vicenzo holing out for an eagle on the first hole on the way to a 65, and for Bob Goalby […]